1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to systems and methods for communication between an airborne wireless terminal and a terrestrial location, wherein the communication occurs via satellite or terrestrial link.
2. Description of Related Art
Business travelers increasingly travel with both a cell phone and a laptop computer in order to improve the productivity of the time spent while traveling. A growing number of cell phone users are requiring wireless connectivity to networks in order to have data communicated to a display on a web-enabled cell phone. Therefore, cell phones are bundled with personal digital assistants that can communicate both with voice and data.
Communication links presently exist that can handle voice communications, as well as digital data, by sampling a voice signal and digitizing it. For example, the integrated services digital networks (ISDN) was originally conceived to transmit digitized voice.
The Inmarsat Swift 64 is a satellite transceiver system, specified and operated by Inmarsat Ltd. of London, England, which can provide communications between an airborne aircraft and a remote network. The Inmarsat Swift 64 transmits communication signals to and from a satellite on dedicated, 64 kbps bandwidth channels. The Inmarsat Swift 64 can handle both voice and data simultaneously through ISDN and data only via the Mobile Packet Data System (MPDS). Presently, however, the ISDN channel is used to transmit user data, even when no voice call is present, which is a very inefficient use of bandwidth. Furthermore, each ISDN channel can only be used to transmit at most, two voice calls at one time. A device is needed which can improve the efficiency of use of the ISDN channels available on board aircraft and other mobile platforms.